http://www.engvid.com/ Look down at your hand and see if you can name its parts. If you don’t know the names of all your fingers, this lesson is for you! In this video, you will learn words such as “pinky”, “major”, “index”, and expressions like “fingers crossed” and “to give someone the finger”. You can tell a lot about a person by just looking at their hands, so watch this lesson today to learn how to talk about them. Afterwards, do the quiz to test your understanding of the material. http://www.engvid.com/hands-vocabulary-expressions/

TRANSCRIPT

Hi. James, from EngVid, and I’m showing you my hand. It’s handy for a reason. Now, I did a video earlier on on hands with idioms, just idioms. So go check that out. Fun one. It’s rather handy. But this video is a little different. It’s going to be, sort of, beginner, intermediate — and I’ll explain — simply because the first couple of minutes, Mr. E and I are going to explain the parts of the hand. Now, you can skip it if you want and just keep watching and go, “Oh, my god. They don’t know.” But really, sometimes, people don’t know. I’ve had students walk up and go, “Teacher, you do this. What is this?” I go, “It’s not your foot toe. It’s not your toe finger. It’s something else.” Okay? They have names, and we’re going to work on them right now.

So the hand — there. Okay? And we’re going to look at the hand and the parts. To start off with, you have a thumb. This is this part, you know, the cool one. You’ve got your index finger. “Index” because we use it to point at things. That’s why the other name is “pointer”. Right? Sometimes, we call it “pointer” because we point over or indicate or index. Okay?

Next one is the middle finger. It’s this finger. I can’t show it on camera. And if you’re 18, you can take a peek, but there. Okay? It’s your index finger — sorry. Middle finger. Once again, the middle finger. Right? And that’s it. So it’s the middle one. I’ll explain what that’s for. And the ring finger. Right? You put your rings on this one. It usually indicates marriage, funny enough. You’re married or you’re single. If you have a finger — finger. Hopefully you’ve fingers because you’re typing on the computer. But if you have a ring on this finger, on the left hand, it usually means marriage in Western culture. And then, you’ve got the baby finger, the pinky finger. You know? Dr. Evil finger. I will finger you with this. No, I won’t.

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And what about the rest of the hand? Because these are the fingers, so you know. But then, you’ve got that back of the hand. I call it the business hand. When someone is giving you a problem, you go, “You want the business hand or the friend side?” Speaking of which, this is the palm. The palm is the inside of the hand. Okay? And the back. So we’ve got that. Now, it’s not part of the hand, but very important is the wrist because the wrist is where the hand connects to the rest of our body. Cool?

And doctors like this part. On your wrist, you can find your pulse. That’s your heartbeat. It’s all in your hands, son. It’s all in your hands, your whole life. Cool? All right.

So Mr. E is just demonstrating. You know? He blew it up so you could take a look at what his hand looks like. All right? Now, these are called “fingers”, by the way. I know. Because you’re going, “We have all these names, but what do I call all of them together?” We call them “fingers”. And before I nail this one, do you — see? Fingernail. Your fingernails. Your fingernails — each one has a little thing here. It’s called your “fingernail”. All right? So you’ve got fingernails on your fingers. And your forefingers plus your thumb — the thumb is separate. That’s why I put these in blue. The thumb is not considered a finger. It’s considered just a thumb. Your fingers plus your thumb make up your hand with your palm, the business end — the back of the hand. Right — and your wrist. You ready? Let’s learn how to use these things, shall we? Let’s take a look — a walk. I’m just going to — there we are. That was fast. Didn’t need to do that, did I? I should’ve just turned around. Oh, well.

Okay. So first thing I want to point out in this lesson, “somebody” and “something”. “S/b” like this stands for “somebody”. It’s found in most dictionaries for people learning English and people who speak English. That’s what it means when you see it. And “sth” like this means “something”. Just shorthand. Small, quick way to write “somebody” or “something”, so you know what it means.

Now, we talk about fingernails, the smallest part of your hands. So why don’t we start with that? When somebody tells you they’re “hanging on by their fingernails”, it means they’re barely surviving. It’s almost like everything is going to go away, and they’re just barely alive.